Decentring the child human in qualitative research: a philosophical “toolbox”

Abstract

Purpose Drawing on the philosophies of Donna Haraway, Rosi Braidotti, Karen Barad, Jane Bennett and Erin Manning, this paper explores five “doing concepts” as methodological tools for qualitative inquiry: “sensing the minor gesture,” “tracing a phenomenon,” “attuning to flows of energies,” “attending to thing-power” and “making-with.” These concepts function as an open-ended “tool box” that resists prescriptive methodologies, instead encouraging researchers to unlearn power-producing binaries – such as Human/environment, Big/small and Adult/child – embedded in humanist traditions. Design/methodology/approach Posthumanist and feminist new materialist perspectives challenge traditional notions of child subjectivity by emphasising the relational entanglements of human and more-than-human bodies. The concept of the “posthuman child” (Murris, 2016) resists fixed definitions, instead emerges iteratively through dynamic relationalities. However, this raises critical methodological questions: Does decentering the child necessarily imply a “flat ontology” that erases power relations? How do researchers engage with more-than-human actors – air, insects and microbes – without sidelining children’s agency in qualitative research? Findings A diffractive reading of David Wiesner’s Mr Wuffles! (2013) demonstrates how these concepts generate new ways of thinking, sensing and engaging with research materials. Rather than reinforcing static subjectivities, the toolbox enables a fluid, processual approach to research that decentres the Adult human perspective without erasing the child. By continuously interrogating the assumptions embedded in research apparatuses, this approach fosters a more nuanced, ethically responsive engagement with children and the more-than-human world. Originality/value This is a highly original contribution to the urgent question of what it means to decentre the (child)human.

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